High Scores - what shall we do?
5 years ago
United States

Well still. I thought people hate having to use another page besides src as it is? Making another site is a whole extra thing when it already works for some games to just track it here.

Dracaarys likes this
Canada

[quote=Imaproshaman]people hate having to use another page besides src as it is?[/quote]

As someone who does both speed and score-related things, personally I'd rather use a separate purpose-built site than have something that doesn't really belong here crammed in just for the sake of doing so.

We have enough trouble keeping up with the needs of the speedrunning community around here (no disrespect to site staff, they're a small volunteer team doing their best), you really think adding all the needs of the various high-score communities on top of that is a good play?

Edited by the author 4 years ago
dripping, Imaproshaman, and Tigame like this
Valhalla

Using that same logic we can arrive at turning SRC into an email service, an IM service, a streaming service, etc.

High score runs are just something entirely different. While two hobbies may have overlap, they are separate things entirely.

Also you burden speedrunner mods for leaderboards with mod duties on long ass high score runs. Which, maybe they're not the right people for the job. So you then have to take on mods just for high scores, but then you would probably need a separate mod status for SR mods and HS mods. At that point they should be their leaderboards, and at that point making it's own little site on the side isn't too much of a stretch either.

Ultimately there are sites for this sort of thing already so I'm not sure what the deal really is.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
United States

[quote​=Komrade] Ultimately there are sites for this sort of thing already so I'm not sure what the deal really is. [/quote​]

Most of those sites are crap. I personally would like to have high scores here, because I like the way the community is self moderated for the most part. You have a video, people can challenge it and it either goes up or gets denied.

Also, Idk how to quote people on here.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Imaproshaman likes this
United States

Ah, yes, I am so happy to see this thread! I can't believe I didn't see it sooner. Personally, high scores carry a lot of meaning. I think they share more similarities to speedrunning than may meet the eye.

In speedrunning, the goal is to complete a fixed number of objectives in the fastest time possible. In high scoring, the goal is to complete as many objectives as possible (namely, those which earn you points toward your score) in a fixed amount of time.

I realize that some games are played in such a way that more time inevitably can lead to a higher score. However, I think there are many, many notable games for which this is not the case. Even for the games to which this concern would pertain, there are often such elements of continuous skill as not losing health or lives.

Consider Donkey Kong (1981), each stage has a bonus points counter. The faster you beat a stage, the more bonus points you get. But if the bonus counter reaches zero, you lose a life (of which you have a limited number). Thus, in the context of each stage, you seek to maximize the number of points you can collect through various means, but you still have a time limit. This wouldn't be particularly interesting if you could play an indefinite number of levels as long as you don't lose all your lives. Alas, this isn't the case. In the 22nd level, it is impossible to complete the first stage because of the kill screen. Thus, one loses all their remaining lives here. In terms of timing, there is a limitation on gameplay. Jetpac Refuelled is another game which has a maximum number of levels with each level having a time limit.

Another example of score-based gameplay are minigames from such games as Banjo-Tooie, Perfect Dark (Firing Range), Crash Bash, Yooka-Laylee, Pokemon Stadium, and even the archery games from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask (and countless others).

There may be games which do not lend themselves well to score-based gameplay. But there exist similar such examples for the purposes of speedgaming. Furthermore, there are some games which could have a meta-score, of sorts, given for gaining the most points within a certain amount of time. For example, Jetpac has a page on SRC for fastest completion of the first stage. What if there was a speedrun page, a highscore page, and then a page which contains the ratio of points earned per second of gameplay? The timing can still stop after the first stage's rocket takes off, but it would be a fusion of the two complementary components of gameplay from some classics! :) Just a thought.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Imaproshaman and Bruzzi like this
United States

@jigsaw_master Interesting concept, but people would end up prioritizing either time or points, not both, so it wouldn't hold much value.

I wouldn't mind myself if SRC hosted points, but given we've had a year of debate with little result...

European Union

@Quivico that it's been a year doesn't really mean much in the end, considering Direct Messages, and some other QoL features that took "some" time to get made.

It's still up for debate until the Team (ergo Pac) comes to a decision.

DarQ, Bruzzi and 2 others like this
Dublin, Ireland

"high scores are not what the name "speedrun dot com" implies."

By that logic, why even have 100% speedruns when any % would technically be the fastest way to get from start to finish in a game? I think just have high scores on speedrun.com and keep it all centralized.

Barra, Remix227 and 2 others like this
Valhalla

@Noobsaibot21 100% and any other such category is a set of rules and/or boundaries you set in an attempt to beat the game as fast as possible within those boundaries.

High score runs are the exact opposite of a speedrun. They have their own goal (get the high score), but it's about how long you can play the game, not how fast you can beat the game.

If we go by your logic we could keep stretching the meaning behind SRC as thin as possible. Why not LP leaderboards? What about point system leaderboards for vs fighting games?

@realabruzzi That's not really SRCs problem, and it's not like things are much different here. You run into a lot of problems with trying to force speedrunners to moderate high scores. So you'd have to add mods that deal in high scores. At which point you might as well make separate leaderboards entirely (whole new game pages) at which point you'd be better off making a whole new site. I feel like I've made this point before, people should read the thread.

edit: yeah I kinda did

Edited by the author 4 years ago
4, Imaproshaman, and ShikenNuggets like this
United States

THIS exactly.

Dracaarys likes this
Washington, USA

As someone who's spent time doing score hunting elsewhere, the fact is there's a need for a site that does it right. Because there currently isn't one - whether it's completely confusing and unusable sites, effectively zero validation, or site owners that don't quite know what they want to do, nothing out there now has a chance at getting enough people on board. But it also means that SRC shouldn't do it at all if it's not going to be better than all of what's out there already - if it's not compelling enough to bring in the existing highly fragmented scoring "community", it just makes things worse.

To whether or not it's interesting enough... well, remember there's a lot that scores cover. They're not all about how long someone can marathon the game without collapsing. Honestly, any game where the top score is just about playing the longest is probably not worth even tracking.

Moorea, MuckPie and 7 others like this
United States

I agree with this.

jigsaw_master likes this
Arizona, USA

Two years later and I am still waiting for an update regarding this

RyuukaShinrai and diggity like this
Canada

Keep waiting.

No matter what form this takes it would be a massive undertaking and certainly will not be happening anytime soon, if ever.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Bro3256 and xenkaroshi like this
Washington, USA

Yeah, at this point I've given up on SRC doing high scores, and am just making the best among the exiting sites that handle scoring.

we should rebrand to runs.com and accomodate all runs

QueenVanræn likes this
New York, USA

Oh my god let this thread die

ShikenNuggets likes this